Mad Tinker's Daughter

by J. S. Morin

  “Fine, we’ll find another way,” Jamile relented.

  Madlin slumped down amid the blankets. The mountains in the distance couldn’t arrive soon enough for her liking. Once the mine was hers, she could get back to Tinker’s Island and plot something elaborate, perhaps take advantage of the situation to work sabotage or gather information. Once she got over the initial terror and shock, Rynn ought to be of real use to the rebellion from within the belly of their true enemies: the slavers.

  “What about your friends?”

  “Pick got them on the thunderail, I guess.” Madlin sighed. She had worried that No-Boots was going to be left behind, but it ended up being her—or both of them. “They might feel bad, but they wouldn’t have waited for me.”

  “No, I mean your other friends. Didn’t you tell me that one of them refused to go along?”

  Madlin sat up. “That’s right! Tabby is still in Eversall Deep.”

  “Is that her real name?”

  “No, it’s Tabita. If you can get word to her, she probably has a way to get in touch with Hayfield and Rascal.”

  “I’ll do it,” Jamile said. “I’ll find a way to let Tabita know where you are and that you need help.”

  Madlin swallowed, then took a deep breath. “That means I’m going to have to wake up and find out where in Korr they’re taking me.”

  Jamile put a hand on Madlin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right beside you.”

  Only here. Over there I’m on my own.

  Chapter 16

  “Just because you’re usually right doesn’t mean you’re right this time.” -Madlin Errol

  A steel spindle whirled at a blur. It hung from an armature of gears and screws, and translated via of a set of cranks. Calloused hands turned those cranks with fluid ease, guiding the spindle as it bit its way through a block of steel, whittling it away and throwing a fountain of metallic flakes into the air. The metals protested their rough treatment with a constant shriek, which subsided to a deep hum of lubricated gearworks when the spindle’s advance halted.

  “I say, Mr. Errol,” a voice shouted across the workshop in one such lull.

  Cadmus looked up to a blueprint clipped at the head of the machine, then down to the demarcations engraved around the cranks. He beckoned with one hand in the direction of the voice, inviting its owner to approach. Cadmus advanced the spindle a bit farther, drowning out the sound of the man’s footsteps. With another check of the blueprint, he gave a satisfied nod.

  The Mad Tinker grabbed hold of a lever and heaved, and a giant clutch disengaged his machine from the central crankshaft, which ran below the workshop. The spindle slowed to a halt and the room grew quiet save for a rumble from beneath the floor.

  When Cadmus took his attention away from the machine, he was greeted by Tonny Yvers, who handed him a stack of papers on a clipboard. “I said I’d like to have a word with you about this month’s report.”

  The pudgy man with a close-trimmed beard stood waiting with his hands clasped behind his back. He stood motionless as he watched Cadmus flip through the report. Besides the central crankshaft’s background grumbling, the only sounds came from those pages and the man’s wheezing.

  “Everything appears in order. Thank you, Yvers,” Cadmus said as he flipped the pages of the report back into a neat pile on the clipboard before handing it back.

  “Thank you, sir,” Yvers replied. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out though that we’re not shipping like we were. Three months of production being up, but shipments outbound going down.”

  “Yes, I’m aware.”

  “It just got me wondering whether, perhaps, you know ... folk might not need so many guns anymore.”

  Cadmus’s lip curled. “You must know a different humanity from the one I know. Everything is fine. We’ll sell all the rifles we want at whatever price we set. Just make sure the warehouse is in order for the foremen’s meeting tonight.”

  “That’s tonight, sir?”

  “I moved it up after some recent developments.”

  “Righty-oh, sir, won’t be a problem.”

  Cadmus waited until Yvers closed the workshop door behind him to resume his work. Turning paper into metal was the closest thing Cadmus knew to magic. It was also so ingrained in his hands that it left his mind free to scheme, spinning faster than the spindle of the metal-carving machine.

  The warehouse workers were all off at their suppers, their drinking, or whatever amusement regular men found after a long day’s toil. The warehouse they tended was anything but empty. Men lounged about on crates, leaned against shelves, stood in pockets carrying on half a dozen different conversations. A few women numbered among them as well, clustering in a single knot of their own. Cadmus knew them all by their names, their backgrounds, their histories, the sort of skills they knew. He had met only a handful of them in Korr as well, but every last one was twinborn.

  Cadmus was the last to arrive by design. The rumors had been stewing, and he wanted to put an end to them all at once. His boots clomped along the poured-stone floor and conversations died out. His employees knew better than to waste his time, even with the wide latitude he granted the twinborn among them.

  Cadmus looked around the warehouse, counting heads, nodding here or there in acknowledgement. “Evening everyone. I’ve got a few things to discuss and a vat full of rumors to quash. We keep this brisk, you can all get a dinner while it’s still warm. Let’s round those rumors up. What are you hearing?”

  “We’re expecting an attack,” one man suggested.

  “That one’s easy. We’re not. No one’s even fool enough to consider it. We make their guns, so they know we’ve got the same or better, and our navy would sink any fleet that got close.”

  “What about the tunnel drills? The riflemen have been wondering.”

  “I’ll get to that later. Next rumor.”

  “We can’t pay our bills.”

  Cadmus laughed, and a few of the gathered twinborn joined him. “Hurlan will get their payment for that shipment of copper when I get a good explanation of how pirates got hold of the rifles I sold them. We had a clear understanding—as clear an understanding as we had on the terms of payment for that ore—that those rifles weren’t to be resold.”

  “Your daughter’s off buying up a mine that’s filled with gold.”

  “True. Every word of it. Some lucky fool is opening a mine right outside where Eversall would be. Used to be a gold mine there centuries ago. Only one of our kind would know to mine there. Otherwise, some fellow has the luck of the butcher’s dog, picking that spot.”

  “Papers in Korr said that there was a riot in Eversall Deep a few days back. Are the rebels there working for you?”

  Cadmus frowned. “No, and they’re making it worse for everyone. Bunch of bunglers, the lot of them. Two caught and hanged, another dozen accomplices arrested; probably a few innocents dragged in among that dozen, too, if the knockers hold to form.”

  “Maybe if you organized them—”

  “Enough of that. I’ll get to that in a moment. I’ve got an engine coming to full steam, and I can’t have hooligans yanking on the whistle.”

  “Enough of the juggling monkey show, Cadmus. Just tell us what’s going on.”

  A silence settled in the wake of that comment. Cadmus let it settle, scanning the crowd until he could be sure all eyes were on him.

  “Escape.”

  After a lull in which Cadmus provided no follow-up to that one word response, the warehouse erupted in a cacophony of questions and speculation.

  “ESCAPE,” Cadmus shouted, drowning out the twinborn crowd and cowing them into silence once more. “I have built a machine that can tear a hole in the world. I can open the other end anywhere I like. We will gather up as many humans as we can, slave and freeman alike, and be done with the kuduks forever.”

  The riot of questions that followed was unintelligible. Cadmus patted his hands in the air to call for quiet, then pointed at some
one to speak.

  “Where is this machine?” a woman asked.

  “In Korr. In my patron’s workshop in Eversall Deep.”

  “If it’s in your patron’s—”

  “Please let me finish!” Cadmus glared at the offender. “There are complications of course. I don’t have leave to use the machine at leisure. I can’t plan the time of the escape very far in advance. For now, I want you all thinking how you can best get your own friends, families, neighbors, and fellow slaves gathered into large groups at an appointed time. When you have a location, I want it handed to me in a written report, with as much information as possible. My twin will be using the machine in search mode to determine coordinates for a rapid series of world-hole openings on the day I initiate the escape plan.”

  Someone waved a hand in the air, a sign of Takalish schooling. Cadmus pointed, indicating he would allow the next question.

  “Where will we go? Are we going to try to take over an army barracks or an airship port? Make a stand somewhere, or just flee to an uninhabited corner of the world?”

  Cadmus broke into a wicked grin. It was the question he had been waiting to hear.

  “We’re coming here. To Tinker’s Island.”

  The twinborn had left the warehouse giddy. None had imagined that it was possible to travel between worlds, but all it took was a promise from Cadmus Errol, and they believed. They scattered, alone or in small clusters, off to figure out how many of their loved ones they could save and how they would round them all up on short notice.

  One of those small clusters included Cadmus. He and a few of his closest advisors adjourned to the sitting room of Cadmus’s home with ales in hand. It was one of the few occasions when Cadmus indulged in drink.

  “There are a few details I’m blurry on, Cadmus,” Orris said. He lounged in a high-backed chair with one leg slung over the arm, and his Kheshi-made silk shirt half unbuttoned. He gestured with his third mug of ale as he spoke.

  “Such as?” Cadmus asked. He sat in a similar chair, still nursing his first ale.

  “Well, why’d you send Madlin away? I would think at a time like this, you’d want her close by.”

  “I’d have thought the same thing,” Arvin agreed.

  “Are we talking about the same girl?” Cadmus asked. “I need Madlin’s help like I need another daruu mucking about in my plans.”

  “You’ve said yourself she’s as good a tinker as you are.”

  “Was,” Cadmus corrected. “Was at her age. She’s got a lot to learn still, but that’s not the point. I can’t sneak her into my owner’s estate to help me work, and having her involved in the plan would just cause turmoil.”

  “I don’t see how she—”

  “Because she’s cast from the same mold as I am. She’d have her own plan sketched up in her head before I could get mine launched and we’d quarrel over whose was better.”

  “But what if her plan was the better one?”

  Cadmus shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We don’t have time for multiple plans. We need one plan that works. If there’s another way that would work better, we don’t have the resources or the chances to try it.” Cadmus frowned into his mug. “And it wouldn’t surprise me if her plan were the better one. Blast me, that girl’s as smart as her mother, and thinks more sideways than forward.”

  “So how will you get her through?”

  “I’ll open a separate hole to the university if I have to, but it shouldn’t come to that. The machine’s in Eversall, and I’ll have five hundred riflemen on hand to send through from this end. Getting her through is the least of my problems.”

  Chapter 17

  “There are times for acting rashly, but never for acting without thinking.” -Cadmus Errol

  Rynn awoke with a metallic taste in her mouth and a dizziness that made her hesitant to open her eyes. She tried to put a hand to her forehead, but found her arm held fast. She was still strapped to the chair. Opening her eyes did little to enlighten her.

  “Hello,” she called out into the darkened room. Her voice was hoarse, her throat raw. It echoed back to her—not the parroted repetition of a canyon or a cliff, but the subtle acoustic blur of a large room with a high ceiling. What is this? Some kind of dungeon?“Is anyone there?”

  Rynn felt her stomach twist, and renewed panic set in as she absentmindedly tried to shift to a more comfortable position and found all shifting denied. Her feet, hands, and backside were all numb, and her neck was stiff and cramped. She wondered how long it would be before someone came to check on her. By small mercy, it wasn’t as long as she feared.

  With the clack of a switch being thrown, the room was washed in spark light. Rynn squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden glare and tried to blink until they grew accustomed to the light. With her head pulled back, she was forced to look up right into a bulb above, and could hardly manage to keep them open at all. Little burned images of conductive filament swam in her vision even after she closed her eyes.

  “Good. It’s about time she woke up. You gave her too much, Ordy.”

  Rynn recognized the voice of Delliah, the one who claimed to be her new owner. She tried to see where the voice was coming from, but being unable to turn her head or keep her eyes open, the kuduk could have been standing two paces away and Rynn couldn’t have made her out.

  “I prepared the dose ahead. Who knew the rune-tender would turn out to be a little runt of a girl?” replied the one she assumed was Ordy.

  “What is that ghastly smell pervading my laboratory?” Professor Hurmbeck asked. Rynn heard footsteps at an awkward cadence, skin sliding on a metal handrail—they were coming down a set of stairs. Rynn tried to picture the university layout in her head, but she had never been to any laboratory that would fit with her present circumstance.

  “Since Ordy overdosed her, I believe she soiled herself,” Delliah replied. “He’s lucky he didn’t kill her.”

  “Aww, humans aren’t that fragile. You’re just brittle cuz you paid so much for her,” Ordy said.

  “She hasn’t paid me anything,” Professor Hurmbeck said. “Yet.”

  “You’ll have your payment once we establish the quality of your wares. Let’s get this over with. I want her collared and bathed so we can be out by this evening.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Professor Hurmbeck assured her. “Even if she’s uncooperative, we’ll get a reading out of her.”

  “I believe you can count on her being uncooperative, professor.”

  “Water,” Rynn croaked.

  “Oh good,” Delliah replied. The footsteps drew closer. “We can use that.”Rynn felt the light stop trying to pierce through her eyelids. She dared open her eyes and saw Delliah standing over her, blocking the glare of the bulb. She was middle-aged, her sidelocks tinged with grey hair, framing a pudgy face and an overly wide nose. “Let me be very clear on this, Rynn. You get nothing—nothing at all—until we’re done here. If you do as you’re told, you’ll have all the water you require, a good bath, and a change of clothes. Oh, and I’m sure that being out of that chair ought to sound good by now, too.” Delliah gave a close-lipped grin, before recoiling and putting a hand to her nose. “Professor, get started. This stench is intolerable.”

  Rynn’s nose must have accustomed itself overnight, because she hardly noticed the smell. It was mortifying to think that she had soiled herself like an infant, but drew some satisfaction from the fact that she was causing her captors discomfort.

  “If you will just park her over there,” Professor Hurmbeck stated.

  The chair started to roll. Rynn fought against the glare to see where they were moving her. As she rolled out from directly beneath the spark bulb, she got a sense of her surroundings. Her vision only extended as far as her eyes could move, but she could see a forest of spark conduits running down from the ceiling. They were large enough to have a dozen or more individual conductive cables within. There were the ubiquitous hot and cold water lines and a drainage line, but thos
e were triple the standard diameter for a building the size of the university. As she looked around, her field of vision was dominated by a single brass vat, riveted and welded with the look of a steam boiler. There was a glass plate mounted in the tank, right in front of her as the chair stopped. It looked like a porthole from one of her father’s steam ships in Tellurak.

  Rynn heard the sound of small wheels rattling along the stone floor somewhere behind her. The wheels squeaked for want of grease, and a scuffing sound told her that at least one of the wheels was skidding instead of rolling—poor maintenance. Rynn wished she knew of some way the information could help her, but nothing came to mind. She was short on resources; her only options seemed to revolve around her level of obedience to her captors.

  The wheels stopped right behind the chair. Rynn strained to see what it was, but had no greater success than with any of her other endeavors. She only managed to remind herself of the pain in her neck. She heard footsteps coming around the chair and watched as Professor Hurmbeck passed by on his way to the vat. He circled around and she heard the metallic clangs of someone climbing metal stairs.

  “Is this going to be long?” Delliah asked.

  “Just getting initial readings. Only be a moment.”

  “What is all this?” Rynn asked.

  A hand slapped her across the face. “No questions,” Delliah snapped.

  “Oh have some tact,” Professor Hurmbeck chided her. “The girl asked a question, and she’s going to need an answer to it in any event. Why bother—”

  “Because she needs to learn her place,” Delliah said. “I’m going to have enough trouble with this one without you treating her like a kuduk.”

  A light flicked on, illuminating the water inside the vat. There was the hum of a spark engine and a pair of paddles rotated about in the water. Rynn heard the clatter of Professor Hurmbeck descending the stairs. He came and stood in her field of vision, a handkerchief held to his nose and mouth.